Operation Barrel Roll

Operation Barrrel Roll was a US bombing campaign which targeted North Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh trail supply routes in Laos during the Vietnam War.

In the aftermath of the 1964 Bien Hoa mortar attack on 1 November 1964, the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised President Lyndon B. Johnson to order retaliatory strikes on 94 targets in North Vietnam and to send in combat troops to assist the South Vietnamese government, but Johnson refused, as the US presidential election was to be held two days later. After winning in a landslide, he ordered a "graduated response" against Vietnamese communist attacks by stepping up the air campaign.

Within a month, Johnson approved limited air attacks on the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and tit-for-tat retaliatory raids on North Vietnamese targets, although he refused to undertake sustained bombing of the North until the South Vietnamese government was stabilized. Soon, the bombing campaign in Laos became focused on close air support for the Laotian military, CIA-backed tribal mercenaries, and Thailand's volunteer corps. The operation failed to stem the tide of North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao offensives, and it also failed to interdict the Ho Chi Minh trail. Both the US and North Vietnam sought to cover up their operations in Laos, which was officially neutral during the Vietnam War, but which was as equally devastated as Vietnam or Cambodia due to its spillover and the Laotian Civil War.